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Overpopulation
'''Introduction''' Millions of people every day ignore the fact that there are human-caused problems in this world that will lead to negative outcomes. Human overpopulation is an example of one of these problems in this world that has been rising for centuries now. There is a cause, effect, and solution to every problem in this world but I’ll be focusing particularly on all the causes of human overpopulation. There are lots of factors that contribute to this worldwide problem and a few of the major causes are poverty, immigration, reduced mortality rates, and the technological advancement of infertility treatment. Every day there are more and more children born, and overpopulation is a growing concern to the world. The global population is growing at a rate of about 1.08% per year. '''Causes''' Overpopulation is an overlooked condition where the amount of people on Earth goes over the capacity of land across the nation. There are many factors which contributes to why overpopulation is a problem in this world but the main focuses in this article are poverty, immigration, reduced mortality rates, and the technological advancement of infertility treatment. '''Poverty''' The word poverty is the state of being extremely poor and this is common in countries like India and Nigeria. Poverty is the leading cause of human overpopulation because people who are financially poor need more hands to work. To help themselves they decide to make more babies and use child labor to help the family and become another source of extra income. It was actually predicted that the forty-eight poorest countries in the world are also likely to be the biggest contributors to population growth. This proves exactly how poverty is a direct correlation to this worldwide problem. Just to add another problem with families who have their children working at a young age is that they won’t have the opportunity to have an education which is important in life. This prediction states that the combined population of these poor countries is likely to increase to 1.7 billion in 2050, from 850 million in 2010 which is a tremendous leap because there won't even be enough resources to produce for this new population of people. '''Immigration''' Immigration is another major cause of overpopulation. Immigration into countries are often unchecked and too many people will lead to a sudden decrease in required resources. Some people recognize the population of their country increasing and resources depleting then decide to emigrate, but they don’t know that they're contributing to the same issues they just left. Immigrants who come into a new country are also looking for a better life and better resources so they are more likely to overpopulate certain places and take an abundant amount of resources. Immigrants also love to settle down and overcrowd in popular cities for example in New York City there are lots of immigrants and New York City is already very much overpopulated. China, India, and the United States of America are the top three countries with the highest population and the U.S. has a total of 46,627,102 foreign-born citizens who migrated here, coming to gain freedom, unlike the other country they came from. Most of the immigrants that come from Mexico and other Latin American countries to start over in life and have another opportunity to be successful and get a job. Its' obvious that immigration is directly correlated to why countries are overpopulated because some immigrants come illegally and sneak their way into freedom. '''Reduced Mortality Rates''' Reduced Mortality is the next major cause of human overpopulation that will be focused on. Improvement in medical technology and birth rates rising above the decline of death rates is why overpopulation is relevant in many countries. If the number of children being born was fairly equivalent to the number of people dying then human overpopulation will be reduced. At the same time, it’s more common for birth to happen than death happening by a natural cause. This advancement is the main reason why the balance of birth and death are widely distributed. An estimate of 131.4 million births happen per year and nearly 55.3 million people die each year, it’s almost impossible for birth and death rates to match, but that was another way to think about how low mortality rates affect human overpopulation. The advancement of medical technology is the reason why mortality rates are so low because there are diseases in the world that have been cured to save people's lives. Diseases such as smallpox, measles, rubella, polio, yaws. malaria, hookworms, and lymphatic filariasis have all been eradicated by these advances in technology. Not saying that these advances are bad but rather an explanation as to another reason why overpopulation is very prevalent in our world today. Due to this eradication of disease,s people are now living longer and healthier lives than ever before; people are actually reaching the age of one hundred and higher. Even though the people who suffer from poverty are dying because of the lack of resources, the improvement in medical technology like vaccines helps the number of people alive and being born rise over the rate of death. '''Technological Advancement of Infertility Treatment''' This last reason isn’t as major as the other three causes but it does have an affect on why human overpopulation is common in this world. This cause is the technological advancement of infertility treatment. There are couples out there that are not capable of creating a bay and use this treatment to have their own babies. Without this new and improved method of making children, this would lower the number of humans in the world which will essentially reduce human overpopulation. Now that this advancement is possible lots of couples have been taking advantage of it to make life and add to this already populated world. The human rights in general and reproductive rights, in particular, must be taken into account when thinking about not helping couples who aren’t able to reproduce to decrease overpopulation and avoid using limited resources. '''Effects''' The effects of overpopulation are both vast and broad and have many implications all across the world. Some of the many effects of it are the exhaustion of resources, environmental degradation, rising unemployment, and on a positive note, technological advancements. '''Exhaustion of resources''' As the population increases, the demand for all material goods such as food, infrastructure, and technology increases endlessly. The more people there are around the world, the more farming must be done to sustain a constant supply of food for everyone, but even know it is near impossible to feed everyone sustainably due to lack of space and water. Along with that, we are required to expand our cities to meet the constant influx of people coming in looking for new opportunities and access to utilities and resources. Every new house added to a city or town adds more requirements into national electrical grids, that require more and more electricity as more is added, which in turn has lead to building new fossil fuel burning plants. That in itself is not sustainable, and with projections showing that the demand for electricity is exponential, new ways of generating electricity without fossil fuels, that are both limited in quantity and have huge carbon footprints, must be adopted. All resources on this earth are limited in quantity, as infinite as they may seem, with even water becoming a resource that we may expend without proper management of it. In many countries, clean drinking water is a luxury, since ether they didn’t have it in the first place, have dried up entirely or contaminated it due to increased waste and trash being thrown into wth ater. '''Environmental degradation''' More problems occur due to the ever-increasing population. As stated before, as more and more people are born and grow up, cities, towns and other places of residency have to expand to supply the demand. Cites have sprawled out in every direction, merging smaller towns into them to expand, or going into once uninhabited pieces of land. This has led to severe amounts of environmental degradation and deforestation, where urban sprawl has forced people to cut down forests, pave over fields and divert rivers just in the effort to make more space for people. A recent example of this can be seen in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, where farmers have burned down large portions of it in an effort to clear out space for land that can be used to farm and raise livestock on, in an effort to meet the ever-increasing demand for food. We as a species like to spread ourselves out for more space, but because of that, we must clear out large swaths of land for that reason. As we further expand, we destroy once untouched habitats and degrade environments that in the name of more living space, and at the expense of other life on earth. '''Rising unemployment''' Furthermore, overpopulation is likely to lead to increased rates of unemployment. Globally, current unemployment rates are above the natural rate of unemployment as it is, and an increased population is projected to worsen this. Overpopulation along with the aging population that we currently have would cause increased competition for a scarce amount of jobs, especially at a time where people have to compete with technology for some jobs as it is already. Additionally, should we try to accommodate as many people as we can in order to allow people to have jobs, the minimum wage might fall so low that nobody would want to work for that rate and rather rely on unemployment benefits, thus again increasing the unemployment rate. As such, overpopulation worsens the current unemployment rate and leads to a greater proportion of the population without jobs. A direct correlation to that is an increase in poverty that can worsen the effects of overpopulation and lack of available resources to certain people, which can and has increased crime in lower income cities and neighborhoods. '''Technological Advancements''' But as many negatives, as there are, there are some positives. Because of the closer proximity to people to one another, new and talented minds now have the opportunity to invent and help the rest of the world adapt, better than it would be if people were spread out. New technology has been created due to the circumstances we are living in today. Renewable energies have been worked on for years now as a way to have energy without fossil fuels that are clean and sustainable. Recycling of material goods has also helped lower the usage of limited resources we have, and with that can help give said goods to more people who need them. New water recycling method has helped in making new sources of clean drinking water in places that didn't have such a luxury before, and help curb increased water demand in high population cities and other various locations. Because of our situation, we are forced to innovate and create that will both help and try to mitigate the effects of overpopulation, such as the heavier emphasis on newer and more informed sexual education classes and easier access to contraceptives. Bad situations spur innovation to curb and ease the problems we face, in hopes to improve lives and prevent further damage to the world. In many places, the population growth such as in the West and in some Asian countries has begun to slow down and in some places is projected to decrease, but in other countries, such as in Africa, it is projected to increase to multi-billion in the near future. If we do not try to change the situation we are in, many more problems will occur that will endanger and worsen human life, and therefore must adapt to the coming times and help curb our problems before they even start. '''Solutions''' There are tons of ways to help the world’s urgent overpopulation problem, but in this wiki, I will be focusing on the potential impact of the education system, legislation, adoption, and renewable resources. '''Education''' https://www.renewableresourcescoalition.org/overpopulation-causes-effects-solutions/ One of the easiest solutions to overpopulation is education. Education allows people to make informed decisions. Education starts in schools, and we need to make basic schooling universal for both boys and girls. In order to do this, the world needs to empower women and give them equal rights and opportunities. In parts of the world where education is not prioritized, there needs to be a place for those who are able to learn. Without these facilities, fewer and fewer people will be educated because of other priorities for children. We need to teach our children what is important to help sustain life on planet earth so they can have children. A minimum part of our curriculum needs to be teaching environmental issues and sex education. Teaching about environmental issues allows kids to think about the resources they have, need, or take for granted. This will place an understanding of how our resources are constrained, which will help bring value to those resources. Valuing resources will force people to conserve them and bring a focus on sustainability. The second thing we need to teach our youth is sex education. With technology being so accessible to kids, we cannot protect them from everything, such as pornography. Therefore, it is essential to correctly inform the children of the world about sex in a safe, structured setting to help disprove anything incorrect they see online. Because of the lack of sex education worldwide, nearly 40% of pregnancies are unintended worldwide. https://www.conservationinstitute.org/5-overpopulation-solutions/ [https://www.conservationinstitute.org/5-overpopulation-solutions/ ]When kids know more about safe sex, unplanned pregnancies occur less often. This would not only be helpful to the longevity of our planet, but it would also promote happier, smarter, and healthier sexual experiences. Students should also be taught acceptance towards the use of methods of contraception. Creating and implementing national and worldwide multi-media overpopulation awareness campaigns can also help spread awareness about safe sex. Children need the ability to ask questions and to have a safe place where they can discuss them. Requiring these two areas of focus will help spread awareness, and that is the first step to solving overpopulation. '''Legislation''' https://www.conserve-energy-future.com/causes-effects-solutions-of-overpopulation.php The next step is implementing certain global policies. We need to make universal healthcare available to everyone. Places with a lower child mortality rate tend to have smaller populations in the long term. This is due to the fact that mothers will have fewer children if they are more confident their children will live. These changes in healthcare would include making many types of contraception free, such as condoms, birth control pills, sterilization and abortion. http://visionlaunch.com/8-solutions-overpopulation/ [http://visionlaunch.com/8-solutions-overpopulation/ ]We can also influence people’s behavior through incentives and taxes. [https://www.conservationinstitute.org/5-overpopulation-solutions/ https://www.positive.news/society/5-possible-solutions-overpopulation/ ][https://www.positive.news/society/5-possible-solutions-overpopulation/ ]We need to limit government assistance to the first two children, and we need to make and increase the tax incentives to families who decide to have one child or less. This has been done in some countries in the past such as China. Therefore, it should be in our best interest financially to have fewer children. https://www.everythingconnects.org/overpopulation-solutions.html [https://www.everythingconnects.org/overpopulation-solutions.html ]If necessary, countries may eventually need to place a limit on the number of kids you can have. If the population trend continues, we may need to implement more drastic measures, such as performing forced sterilizations on the public. Countries should also make it a priority to donate to family planning programs, such as Planned Parenthood. Countries should also raise the legal age of marriage to 21 years. Some cultures start families very early, which increases the number of children a married couple can have as well as the number of generations in a small time period. '''Adoption''' Another factor in the growing population is the increasing number of abandoned children. Currently, about 10 million children are living in foster care institutions and over 60 million children are living on the streets worldwide. There are far too few foster families for these children, and adoption rates get lower as the child gets older. Because of this, many foster kids do not get on a good path and are not productive members of society once they become 18 and are released from the foster system. Foster children are often neglected and sometimes even abused by their foster families because of the lack of volunteers to house them. If more families were open to adopting children, especially those who are older, it would greatly benefit the Foster-care system. International adoption continues to be an important solution to overpopulation, and more families have been participating each year. In short, if more families adopted children, the increase in population would slow down. '''Renewable Resources''' Overpopulation is not a problem because of the amount of space on the Earth but because of the limited resources available to people, so another solution is making our world greener. We need to continue to find greener, more sustainable options to give to the public for food production, clothing, housing, and transportation. https://interestingengineering.com/using-smart-cities-to-accommodate-overpopulation-effects Introducing cities with renewable resources through windmills and solar panels would begin to address the issue of limited resources. Because these resources are renewable, it is easy to continue to produce them. Already, sustainability has become a bigger focus in some industries, such as fashion. The fashion industry has introduced several brands of clothing that are made out of recycled materials. Making the switch to green a world would drastically reduce the amount of resources used. With fewer resources being used, a greater number of people can live on this planet. '''Summary''' https://overpopulation-project.com/solutions-to-overpopulation-and-what-you-can-do/ [https://overpopulation-project.com/solutions-to-overpopulation-and-what-you-can-do/ ]In conclusion, the world has a limited number of resources and humanity has a choice to fix overpopulation. Overpopulation can be stopped through the use of countries' policies, education, adoption and renewable resources. People need to understand that their actions matter and that they may impact our planet’s problems. https://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/our-vision-solve-overpopulation [https://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/our-vision-solve-overpopulation ]These informed individuals can then support politicians who understand the urgency of this problem. If we don’t immediately start acting to solve this issue, we will continue to grow in population causing more and more families to suffer through an increase of poverty and disease. It’s our choice to do what is necessary. Overpopulation can be stopped if the world comes together. '''References'''